4th Amendment Takes Two More Hits

Police are supposed to need a warrant to search your house, but the courts have previously carved out an exception for "exigent circumstances", where (for example) the police think that a person inside may be destroying evidence (as immortalized in the 4th amendment text, which reads "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, unless the police really want in."). That gap was widened quite a bit this week when the supreme court decided that the police can use exigent circumstance to search a home, even if they're the ones that created the exigent circumstances in the first place. Police in the case claimed they "heard movement" behind the door after they had knocked and shouted "Police!", and therefore feared the occupants were destroying evidence. Apparently, the appropriate thing to do to preserve your rights when the police knock on your door is to stay perfectly still, make absolutely no noise whatsoever, and hope to God your neighbor in the next apartment doesn't flush his toilet.

And in a second blow, the Indiana Supreme Court decided that you don't have the right to resist police when they illegally enter your home, under the argument that even if it's an illegal entry, you can always sue them later rather than resist them now (lawsuits against police misconduct being so easy to win, of course).

So there you have it. The police can easily manufacturer themselves a reason to enter your house without a warrant, but even if they don't bother, there's nothing you can do to stop them anyway. What's does the 4th Amendment actually guard against anymore?

TSA Decides to Look for Dissenters Instead of Terrorists

CNN has an article up about the various signs that the TSA uses to determine if a person might be dangerous and require heightened "screening". Among them, the following: "Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures."

Does it seem to you like a terrorist trying to blend in with a crowd is likely to be calling attention to themselves by decrying the security practices of the TSA while standing in line at the airport? If not, you might ask yourself why they would bother to screen such people more thoroughly. The answer becomes clear immediately: It's not about safety, and it was never about safety. It's about authority. Dare to question the government, and an agent will be around shortly to humiliate you in any way possible, and maybe next time you'll think twice and shut up in line like the good little obedient citizen they want you to be.

You'll Eat What the Government Gives You Or You Won't Eat

"At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry"

Seriously.

At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago's West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

What she means is, it's their intention to protect students from the food choices of their parents. I sometimes wonder why the government doesn't just cut out parents entirely and go straight to government care facilities for children 0-18. If you can't trust parents to even feed their children, how can you entrust them with the responsibility of finishing at night the indoctrination you've spent all day cramming into their heads? Seems a bit inconsistent to me.

I'm also sure this had nothing to do with it either:

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.

Shifting more power from parents to the government and conveniently lining the pockets of a local corporation? In statist terms, that's what they'd call a "win-win" situation.

The Face of Our Benevolent FDA

The brilliant minds in the FDA have decided to grant a monopoly to Ther-Rx on the production of Makena, a drug to prevent premature births, that was previously produced by non-FDA-approved compounding facilities for about $10 an injection. The new, FDA-approved, "under monopoly" price?

$1,500 per injection.

Did I mention that an at-risk mother may need up to 20 injections throughout her pregnancy? Must be part of the government's push to "lower health care costs" by cutting out that greedy "free market".

I think this sentence says it all:

"The cost is justified to avoid the mental and physical disabilities that can come with very premature births, said KV Pharmaceutical chief executive Gregory J. Divis Jr."

For anyone who needs it, the translation to that sentence is: "We know parents will pay anything to save their child, and now that we have government guns backing up our cease-and-desist letters to the cheap producers, we'll get a chance to see just exactly how much that is."

Wisconsin: Just Like Nazi Germany

You couldn't make this stuff up, folks:



Apparently, the logical process goes something like this:

1. Ask you to contribute a small percentage to your own retirement and healthcare instead of dumping it all on the taxpayers.
2. ???
3. Round up all the Jews!

Torture-Lite Yields No Confession from Manning

U.S. Can't Link Accused Army Private to Assange

U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.

Maybe now they'll put bamboo shoots under his nails until he "confesses".

Government Admits to Lying About Wikileaks Repercussions

Reuters: U.S. Officials Privately Say WikiLeaks Damage Limited

A congressional official briefed on the reviews said the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers. [..] "We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging," said the official

In other words, they lied to the public to bolster their legal case against someone who had publicly embarrassed them. Well, color me surprised.